Whether it’s Women’s Soccer, DSK, Tennis, Bastille Day or a sponsored hash-tag – the web remains rife with anti-French prejudice and sentiment.

1. Brian Moylan of Gawker.com thinks he can do better than Cracked.com with his weak list of “10 things we should send back to France”. We’re guessing Ryan Tate(1) was too busy.
2. @LukeRussert (2) tweeted: Also in the midst of depressing #debt talks, go #USA women’s soccer! I don’t like losing to #France in anything. #FreedomFries
3. Still over at twitter, a sponsored hash-tag (#wheninfrance) unleashed a flood of French Bashing
   
4. Women’s Soccer provided plenty of fodder for the press and twitter
   1. After gargantuan win, U.S. can’t expect a French surrender
   2. Twitter was rife with surrender jokes over Women’s Soccer
   3. Some took offense at our replies: (1) (2) (3) (4)
5. In other news: Les Bêtes Fromages by Llewellyn Hinkes – “After all, this is the selfsame empire that slaughtered its way through most of Europe under Napoleon and used its trans-national power to colonize Haiti, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Chad, Algiers, Tahiti, Polynesia, Togo, Madagascar, Mauritania, Benin, Niger, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Mali, Congo, Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, French Guiana, Morocco, Quebec, Eastern Canada, the American Midwest, and Louisiana.“

Meanwhile, part the French Consular Network (Miami – San Francisco – Nouvelle Orléans) is promoting the work of a group called “The French Will Never Forget“.

(1) Ryan Tate @ Gawker : “But [Angelina Jolie's] lazy, arrogant French doctors will make her wait in agony for three more days so they can celebrate cutting off rich people’s heads like communists and probably also so they can fornicate with their unbathed mistresses, get drunk and fantasize about terrorism.”
(2) Luke Russert is a television and radio personality who has followed in the footsteps of his father, the late Tim Russert)

États-Unis d’Amérique, dépendances et Bahams

• Boston : 7-24 juillet : Festival du Film Français
• Où fêter le 14 juillet à New York ?
• New Jersey – French Institute Alliance Française
• Où fêter le 14 juillet en Floride, à Porto-Rico, dans les Iles Vierges américaines ainsi que dans les Bahamas ?
• Nouvelle-Orléans : Festival de cinéma français de La Nouvelle-Orléans
• Célébrations du 14 juillet : Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas
• Los Angeles : Fêtez le 14 juillet avec French Tuesdays !
• Chicago
• Nord-Ouest Américain
• Washington D.C. (Ambassade) – avec carton d’invitation

Canada

• Acadie et provinces atlantiques
• Toronto – Torontois.com (17 juillet)
• Ottawa (Ambassade) – avec carton d’invitation
• Consulat de France à Québec – avec carton d’invitation
• Montréal : l’Union Française

Saint-Pierre et Miquelon

• Mairie de Saint-Pierre : reporté au 17 juillet

Long live Franco-American Friendship.

What’s really interesting to us, at Miquelon.org, is that after 8 years of no support from the French political establishment, French Bashing is now a convenient card to play when it suits someone’s political agenda. How convenient …

So far, we have seen little or no French Bashing save a few lousy headlines in faux-French over the DSK Affaire. Most attacks have been aimed squarely on DSK’s personality, his status and his lifestyle. Just like in France.

If anti-French sentiment is expressed in this case, we’ll be the first to denounce it. In the meanwhile, Jack Lang might want to keep his opinions on the matter of French Bashing to himself.

• Source : LePost.fr

I enjoyed this endeavor, I was proud to do the work so many others recoiled from and appreciated the support from the many thousands who donated, wrote in with leads or confided their personal stories stemming from the stupidity of base French-Bashing.

But something lately has not been quite right.

Last year, many French citizens discovered they had become second class citizens. Having a foreign born parent, like myself, meant they could not renew passports or identity documents without proving their foreign born parents had indeed become full fledged French Citizens. At the time, like many others, I alerted my elected officials. The issue seemed to be resolved despite the decree, written by then Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkzoy, still being on the books.

This week, state affairs have taken on a new twist.

French member of parliament, Claude Goasguen, put forth a proposition that would curb the number of dual citizens by stripping them of political rights and keeping a special register of said dual nationals. Being a Citizen of France through my father and a Citizen of Canada by maternal lineage, here I am today, lumped into a new class of sub-citizens of the French Republic.

My Citizens Abroad Assembly Representative (Assemblée des Français de l’Étranger) tried to reassure me yesterday by claiming this proposition had little chance of becoming law despite the fact Claude Goasguen is the head of the parliamentary committee overseeing changes to the citizenship act.

Naturally, I protested the project vociferously using all possible channels, including Goasguen’s Facebook profile. I was quickly excluded and saw all my comments quickly removed.

I now have a sour taste in my mouth. I feel my country’s government no longer considers me – and  millions of others – as full citizens. I have shied away from French internal politics on this site, but I can no longer ignore the fact the UMP party is at the forefront of this nasty cabal.

I wonder how many French expatriates who are dual citizens, or have children with dual citizenship, will remember this next year when they are called to the polls to elect parliamentary members for the first time ?

Marc, dual citizen of France and Canada
Petit fils de poilu et descendant de triple déportés …

Here are a few articles and comments worthy of note.

• Du «french bashing» en Amérique – Petite poussée anti-française avec l’intervention «alliée» en Libye, mais bien moindre que lors de la guerre d’Irak. By Antoine Bourguilleau – The article’s approach is interesting but misses a lot of what we’ve uncovered over the near decade of existence. See my response below to Bourguilleau.
• “‘[...] Only Obama could make France look good” – David Letterman
• The French: ‘Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys’ No More?

Glenn Beck is known for having openly stated his hatred for the French. This was before his more notorious bat shit crazy stunts and his subsequent demise. Where is Beck today: fewer markets, almost no advertisers and the focus of endless petitions and protests.

Jay Leno is hardly even worth mentioning anymore. His name has become synonymous with backstabbing, low ratings and just bad comedy. Howard Stern, the granddaddy of French Bashing, has also turned on Leno: “He’s not fit to scrub David Letterman’s feet”

Dennis Miller still appears on Bill O’Reilly’s broadcast. The two notorious French Bashers rarely if ever mention France or the French anymore.

George W Bush is still considered politically radioactive by members of his own party and virtually irrelevant by most. Although his image has gradually improved since he left office, his presidency is still regarded as one of the worst in modern history. Bush is now reduced to taking swings at his former press secretary, Scott McClellan…

Condoleezza Rice still doesn’t regret the Iraq war but admits “the mistake…was to put a spotlight simply on the weapons of mass destruction”. Still no apology for her comments about “punishing France”.

Donald Rumsfeld wrote his memoirs and will be touring in early February. He probably won’t be touring outside of the United States…

• Still active in politics are:
  • Former representative Roy Blunt is now a Senator.
  • Jack Kingston is still a very active member of congress.
  • Peter T. King is currently serving in the House, reprensenting New York’s 3^rd district.
  • Walter Jones has since expressed regret for the “freedom fries” incident, and has become a vocal anti-war Republican.
• No longer in office:
  • Virginia “Ginny” Brown-Waite, retired from politics for health reasons.
  • Tom DeLay was sentenced to three years in prison after being convicted on money laundering and conspiracy charges.
  • Dennis Hastert left politics and resigned his seat in November 2007.
  • Bob Ney resigned after he pled guilty to charges of conspiracy and making false statements in relation to the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal.
  • Jim Saxton left politics in 2009.

More :

• President Obama Meets with President Sarkozy – WhiteHouse.gov
• British Reaction to Obama’s declaration
  • UK FURY AS PRESIDENT OBAMA COSIES UP TO FRANCE
  • France is our biggest ally, declares Obama: President’s blow to Special Relationship with Britain
  • America’s real special relationship

A reminder of things past:

• In 2006, even in Canada, we had to contend with snide comments from George Stroumboulopoulous (who never apologized) and Bob Magee at CHFI (who apologized graciously).
• In 1998, France’s win against Brazil marked the beginning of a new wave of surrender jokes in America including Letterman’s Top Ten: “Top Ten Signs France Is Celebrating Their Soccer Victory: 8. Surrendering to Germany.”

Conan O’Brien had been invited to Toronto in early 2004 and aired one of the most vile anti-Quebec and anti-French sketches ever. This comedian’s associate, Robert Smigel and his hand puppet Triumph, caused such a stir the issue was raised in Canada’s parliament.

The very next day, we hand delivered a letter to Conan’s hotel outlining the facts behind French Bashing and seriousness of the issue in the context of Canada’s political and social makeup. We were not the only ones to voice our concerns.

Conan O’Brien apologized.

James Douglas Muir Leno on the other hand has never shown any form of remorse for his insensitive and downright relentless bashing of the French. Having aired tasteless sketches and over 40 anti-French jokes between 2003 and 2006, Leno became the embodiment of French Bashing in American pop culture: from surrender jokes to jabs about our cleanliness, cowardice and duplicity.

In 2006, we drove across the United States to donate a box of books on French history to Jay Leno. We dubbed the operation Educating Jay and a documentary is currently in post-production. Leno never acknowledged our efforts and in a somewhat related story also refused to meet the Consul General of France in Los Angeles despite an open invitation.

One of these two men proved to be a true gentleman, able to accept criticism and apologize for his offences.

The other slandered the memory of the French Resistance and believes the French as a nation and people should be held in perpetual contempt.

Guess who we’re rooting for.

Read more :

• Conan O’Brien
  • Conan O’Brien exports hate speech to Canada
  • Conan Apologizes to Canada – Conan Apologizes to Quebec
• Jay Leno
  • Educating Jay – Our very long list of articles
  • Leno’s Anti-French Materials

I loathe thee.

Not so much for making fun of Sarkozy, he’s a public figure so he’s fair game, but for your utter disrespect for the most traumatic event in our history. Sure the headline is from the Onion (We know it’s satire – but why mention it? That’s the issue we have), but you think it is worthy of attention when discussing France’s Foreign Policy. You see, the 1940 surrender was not about surrender monkeys nor a ten minute battle. It was about being crushed by the most advanced army the world had known and being betrayed by our leadership.

Not only is making fun of 1940 as offensive to the French as 9/11 jokes are to you, but we were not alone in being crushed. Yet I have never seen a British Surrender Joke. Luckily for the British, after 100 000 French soldiers died in 47 days (more than Vietnam, Somalia, Beirut, Iraq and Afghanistan together), the British were able to evacuate Dunkirk with most of their men, taking advantage of a natural barrier called the English Channel.

But what really grates my nerves, and the nerves of 200 000 French citizens who live in North America, is that you, and so many others, have turned this historical event into a character trait. Check out twitter. It’s two surrender jokes a day …

“Mexicans are Lazy. British have bad Teeth. Blacks like Chicken and the French Surrender”. Welcome to the world of prejudice and of cultural reductionism. But since we – the French – don’t have a strong voice nor lobby in Washington to remind you and your ilk of your offense, you think you’re still funny …

It’s been seven years of Anti-French garbage in the US media from Bill O’Reilly, Jay Leno, Howard Stern, Conan O’Brien, Glenn Beck, Dennis Miller, Regis Philbin, David Spade, Craig Kilborn, SNL all edged on by the Bush Cheney administration, yet you are oblivious to the fact this was nothing more than a political kiss shot in the build up the Iraq war.

Bridget Johnson’s Blog @ About.com – Bridget Johnson is the online editor at The Hill in Washington, D.C.

Update (14 July 2011): Welcome to one of our most-tweeted articles. It seems everytime the French are mentioned anywhere in the media, legions of lemmings reach for their tweeting apparatus to make rather lame and pathetic “French Surrender” jokes. Be it Strauss-Kahn, Libya, Tennis, Bastille Day, Women’s Soccer.

Our original article from 2009: Pretty much everybody online fancies themselves a comedian; unfortunately most of us are and will remain wannabes. Now that “Eternal September” has hit twitter, legions of newbies clamoring for attention are using the micro-blogging platform to repeat, rehash and retweet their skewed and simplistic view of history and the world.

On average, about a dozen or so anti-French jabs are written on twitter per week, most of them being some form of “French Surrender” joke. While some are deliberately trying to be offensive, others are living proof there is a “long tail” to America’s recent spate of French Bashing.

A few examples from 2009:

• @timchi – “You can try and run over a french bulldog but it would surrender first”
• @asianlunatic – “Mantastic: When ur in France for holiday, the French will surrender to u, just to be on the safe side.” 
• @JohnHancock61 – “Great movie line from Flushed Away: Lead French frog: To action! French frog commandos: We Surrender!”
• @Simon4365 – “ahhhh the weekend or as the French say “we surrender”!!!” 
• @Hondo11 – “I’ll say it. Pietrus is not only French (known to surrender) he looks strikingly erily to a Primate. FACT” 
• @macslash – “It’s nice to hear Serlet attack Windows with a French accent. Would have expected him to just surrender.”

While most comedic outfits have abandoned French Bashing, especially Jay Leno and his forty or so jokes about supposed French cowardice and propensity to surrender, legions of twitterers, bloggers and comment contributors have kept the myth of French cowardice alive.

Having turned a traumatic historical event of epic proportions into a timeless character trait, French Haters have woven prejudice against France and the French into pop-culture.

Thankfully, one of North-America’s most astute international columnists has decided to take the myth of French cowardice and surrender head on. I present to you, Eric Margolis and his column : “Getting to the truth about World War II”. Thank You Eric. Merci.

Here are a few excerpts:

“France’s army did not simply surrender or run away in 1940, as ignorant American Know-Nothing conservatives claim. “

“Britain’s well-trained expeditionary force in France was beaten just as quickly and thoroughly as the French, and saved itself only by abandoning its French allies and fleeing across the Channel. “

“France lost 217,000 dead and 400,000 wounded.  Compare that to America’s loss of 416,000 dead during four years of war in the Pacific and Europe.”

Eric Margolis is an award-winning columnist who contributes regularly to the Quebecor Media Company and the Huffington Post. His articles appear in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Times of London to name a few. Eric Margolis has also appeared on CNN, BBC, France 2, France 24, Fox News, CTV and CBC.

See also: French Bashers hit twitter @ Miquelon.org

To find and respond to French Bashers on twitter, check out these searches :

• “French surrender”
• “Arrogant French”
• “Surrender monkeys”
• “Hate French”

Examples

1. “nØbama apologizes to France for America leaving so many crosses on French hill sides during WWII. Americans have been arrogant, we are arrogant” -  @TPO_Hisself.
2. “French toast? Threaten it with your knife and it will surrender.” @davidpowellbham
3. “Q. Why dont they have fireworks at Euro Disney? A. Because every time they shoot them off, the French try to surrender.“  @JessicaJayyy
4. “rude, ignorant, racist, jealous, envious, inert, thick, stupid, paranoid ! but too dumb to be arrogant thats the french” @facunditas
5. @timchi – “You can try and run over a french bulldog but it would surrender first”
6. @asianlunatic – “Mantastic: When ur in France for holiday, the French will surrender to u, just to be on the safe side.”
7. @JohnHancock61 – “Great movie line from Flushed Away: Lead French frog: To action! French frog commandos: We Surrender!”
8. @Simon4365 – “ahhhh the weekend or as the French say “we surrender”!!!”
9. @Hondo11 – “I’ll say it. Pietrus is not only French (known to surrender) he looks strikingly erily to a Primate. FACT”
10. @macslash – “It’s nice to hear Serlet attack Windows with a French accent. Would have expected him to just surrender.”

South Park’s French Bashing Explored.

The world of cartoons is a powerful way to get out any message you could never achieve with traditional actors or more conventional means. Much like Aesop’s fables, the use of animated characters often serves as a vehicle for political and social satire that avoids serious scrutiny. After all, it’s just a cartoon right?

The Simpsons, Family Guy, King of the Hill and South Park have all achieved success through poking fun at our collective hypocrisies or our contradictions. Unfortunately, when empowered with such a potent vehicle, the creative teams behind these cartoons sometimes let their own prejudices show through.

The Simpsons famously entered the fray of Anti-French prejudice with several barbs, most notably the “Cheese eating surrender monkey” epithet spoken by Groundskeeper Willie in an episode aired on April 30, 1995. In another episode, the character Lenny is also used as a vehicle for Anti-French stereotypes: “I’m shaking like a French soldier!”. Anti-French prejudice from the Simpsons is also evident in licensed games such as “Medal of Homer” (See note 1).

Matt Groening disputed his association with that now famous Anti-French slur: “That was not the original context. It was all about Willie yelling at students in a French class. People took that expression out of context (…) Besides I adore France, to be associated with this was insulting” (See note 2). Given the Simpsons long record of Anti-French attitudes, Matt Groening’s comments can only be considered as pure hypocrisy. But enough with this antiquated series that overstayed its welcome 6 years ago.

Last Wednesday, South Park aired an episode ripped from the headlines that deals with Somali pirates. At one point a French crew surrenders to children wielding toys. In another scene, another characters exclaims: “they were French so of course they surrendered immediately”.

South Park’s late foray into the world of French Bashing is not only regrettable, it proves once more that anti-French prejudice is so entwined in American pop-culture that it will take monumental efforts on our behalf to undo the harm done by years of laissez-faire.

In the meanwhile, little can be done with our limited means. We can however let the creators of South Park know how we feel with it comes to mocking the most tragic event of our recent history or we can also share our opinions with the myriad of bloggers, writers, columnists out there who are applauding this new Anti-French jab like circus seals.

(1) Miquelon.org article on Medal of Homer
(2) Source: Interview with Erwan Cario, July 25th 2007

Related links

• South Park Episode 7, season 13 “Fatbeard”
• Entertainement Weekly by Ken Tucker who thinks this is a “funny depiction of the French as pretentious cowards”
• AvClub.com – tv.ign.com

We at Miquelon.org expect a spike in Anti-French and Anti-SPM sentiment in the Canadian media and press in the next few days. French citizens in Canada are advised against engaging in conversations on this topic and should refer any queries to websites that deal with the history and news of the islands.

• News from and about Saint-Pierre & Miquelon (English): radiobarachois.net
• Continental Shelf Committee (French only) : spm.org
• Saint-Pierre & Miquelon History (primary sources): grandcolombier.com
• Saint-Pierre & Miquelon General Information: st-pierre-et-miquelon.com